The SanFranRoaster Blog......

Back in the day, marketing executive Dave Stahlman traveled a lot for work, including to Dubai, where for the first time he tried Turkish coffee, and extensively in Europe. One of his favorite coffee memories is drinking a cappuccino at a street cafe while looking up at the Eiffel Tower. Incidentally, that remembered taste is the flavor profile he seeks when roasting the Black Powder signature espresso blend.

The only specialty coffee roaster in a town called "The Next Napa" for its vibrant wine-producing culture, Gold Country Roasters's current iteration had a rocky start but promises increasing success. "I was a victim of the recession," says
Lisa Schwartz, owner, and formerly an environmental planner, "not a lifelong dreamer of opening a coffeehouse." Purchasing Gold Country Roasters in Murphys, California, was "crazy, random, and serendipitous" for this coffee lover, but it wasn't an easy journey.

Like many coffee professionals, Micah Svejda didn't set out to dedicate his life to the elusive bean. Nor, years ago in a philosophy program in St. Louis, Missouri, could he forsee roasting on a red San Franciscan coffee roaster in the stately city of St. Paul. "I took a job at Kaldi's Coffee to supplement my income as a teaching assistant," says Svejda, who'd put in years behind the bar in chains like Caribou and Dunn Bros., "and the truth is that I fell in love with coffee and out of love with academia."

Through the Lebanese culture runs a thick ribbon of honor and pride of legacy, father to son, mother to daughter. Hrag Kalebjian grew up dreading Saturday mornings, when his father Henry would drag him out of bed and into the specialty foods store where he roasted coffee. "I just wanted to watch cartoons," Hrag says, and eventually he left the family business altogether to work in corporate finance.

In her mild demeanor and her obvious passion for coffee and community, Christine Herman Rusell embodies the qualities of Case Study Coffee that have seen the business grow from a single espresso cart in 2005 to a soon-to-be three-location coffee establishment in Portland, Oregon. She looks around the spacious downtown location, at the tables full of students chatting and business-people glaring at their laptops, and says, "I just try to choose great coffee and not mess it up, so I can make my baristas' lives easy."

Avoca Coffee was established three years ago in the historic Near Southside district of Fort Worth, TX, the project of childhood friends Garold LaRue and Jimmy Story. “I’m a fifth-generation coffee grower,” says Garold, “and at eighteen when I started working, I decided to become a barista. I’ve been in coffee ever since—seen part of the 2nd wave, the 3rd wave, and the birth of the new wave, whatever it is.” Living with his coffee-farming family in Nicaragua until 1985, when the family escaped the revolution to Fort Worth, Garold has a unique perspective on coffee.

When long-time friends Jelynn Sophia and Beverly Magtanong returned to their hometown of San Diego after years away, they knew they wanted to invest into their community, as well as continue the philanthropic work they’d been doing in the Philippines. “We learned that coffee is actually grown in the Philippines, though it’s not available on the market. Then, we discovered that some of Beverly’s husband Sam’s family owns coffee farms there.” At the same time, a long time friend and prominent chef in the San Diego area, Mike Arquines, was roasting coffee as a hobby on his stovetop and learning more about specialty coffee. The pieces all came together, and Mostra Coffee was formed with the goal of eventually doing direct trade with coffee farmers in the Philippines.

Yesterday, Rise Up Coffee in Maryland celebrated its 9th birthday with the arrival of a San Franciscan SF75. As the roaster took its epic journey from Fallon, Nevada, to Easton, Maryland, we at The San Franciscan Roaster got the chance to write about our interview with owner Tim Cureton about coffee, the Peace Corp, and opening a specialty coffee business in, of all places, Maryland!

Know you need to use Twitter for your coffee roasting company but don’t know how? Or, have you started using it without success? Social media drives the coffee industry more and more; frustrating or overwhelming it might be, but very few coffee businesses can thrive now without online engagement.

The story of San Franciscan owner Harbor Perk Coffeehouse and Roasting Company starts like that of many who fell in love with coffee and coffee roasting: Kelly Sposito was unhappily employed in a downtown Cleveland law firm when her husband Jake bought a coffeehouse in Ashtabula, Ohio in 2006. Over the next few years, Jake did a lot of research on coffee roasters, and in 2009 Harbor Perk Coffee moved to its current 100-year-old location where Steve the SF6 creates conversation and where Ryan Sposito, Jake’s younger brother, roasts daily in the busy season.

The Spositos are a big Italian family, and Kelly jokes “My husband and Ryan have a natural palate for food and beverages, while I’m a wino.” Working with the highly supportive staff at Royal, and doing their best to educate their clientele gently, they’ve enjoyed exploring many of the single origin and micro lot coffees available. Ryan says, “I tend to like like Africans, especially Yirgecheffes, and I get down with Sumatra as well. Our customers appreciate us selling Fair Trade coffees, and we get a kick out creating fun blends to sell around Ashtabula.”

Things for the Spositos were going well until Jake was diagnosed with brain cancer. Kelly says, “Ryan was in college. When Jake got sick, he came home and we taught him to roast so he could take over.” The very communal nature of coffee which they love so much was one of the hardest aspects of dealing with Jake’s illness. “Since Ashtabula is such a small town, everyone knows us and witnessed it from beginning to end. Can you imagine being stuck behind a roaster for 8 hours a day and having to talk about cancer the whole time? But the whole experience really brought our customers and us together as a family.” Jake passed away in August, and Kelly and Ryan carry on his passion at Harbor Perk with a sense of humor and a lot of hard work.

Being the only high-end roaster in Ashtabula gives Harbor Perk a unique position in town, and Ohio’s weather cycles make for a different busy season than other roasters—the summer is hopping for Harbor Perk, while the extreme cold of the winter keeps people in their houses (and not buying coffee.) Customers include a lot of Kent State students, and Kelly says, “We let people do whatever they want as long it’s not too crazy.” In the summer Ashtabula has become a tourist destination, which the Spositos enjoy. Business is going well.

As many San Franciscan customers acknowledge, care and maintenance of their roasters is easier vs. other makes--but it's still a lot of work! “We take very good care of Steve,” says Kelly. Given his residence in an old building, cleaning the flue is a bit more complicated than usual: the lucky cleaner has to crawl up an elevator shaft, take the entire flue apart, and climb out onto the roof to finish the job. Still, the onerous task has become a bit of a coffeehouse event, with friends helping by bringing along various kinds of equipment to aid the process and cheer it along.

With a lot of bravery and a warm sense of community, Kelly and Ryan are moving forward, and one thing is certain: Ashtabula’s got a good thing going in Harbor Perk!